I wasn't really sure where to put this, but I thought it was fire hydrant appropriate.

We have this little out building/ old sheep shelter.

I want to pull all of the old straw/sheep bedding out and put down gravel or something. My issue is that there is currently a gap between the side and the ground which will only get worse as I pull the old crap out. In your opinion, would chicken wire be safe to use there? I currently want to turn it into a small outdoor kennel area.

Chicken wire will likely rust away pretty quickly. You'd probably be better off with galvanized wire fencing or hardware cloth. Or filling the edges with sizeable field stones, etc. that would be harder to move then packing them in with the gravel.

Yup that's hardware cloth Comes in different gauges/mesh spacings/quality(durability) so you can decide what you want to keep in or out. The lid of my brooder is 1/2" hardware cloth:

This is 1/2" x 1" heavier gauge hardware cloth that is a guard to keep mice and such out of the pole barn (it's buried about 10" down) and keep the rabbits from chewing on the wooden stall walls. Like you there was daylight showing through under the stall walls.

A good site for reference when it comes to wire cloth and wire mesh material can be found here:http://www.bwire.com/

They explain on their site, the different types of weaving when it comes to hardware cloth, the way to measure the cloth and the diameter of the wire, and basically will give you a much better idea of what you are looking for. This company will also send you samples of material that you might be considering, this way you can hold in your hand the hardware mesh before you go out and spend a boat load on a roll....

Just an FYI for yall.

Moderator Edit: Full disclosure - the poster appears to be afiliated with the bwire.com entity, based on their registration information.

*Hopefully the 3rd time is the charm here. Every time I hit 'reply' my internet disconnects*

Shai, is that just a hard packed dirt floor? I always picture whatever we do ends up looking kind of like that, but with a gravel/stone floor.

It's gravel + fines, which ends up packing down into a solid/stable floor that still retains good drainage characteristics. The bigger gravel is just stuff I carried in from the gravel pile to backfill the trench I dug for the wire liner. The main floor, which is hard to see in this picture, is flat, but this area was used as horse stalls for a while (unfortunately they tore out the walls/doors and just left the planks you can see on the exterior walls) so there is a layer of fine sawdust and compost residue left over the gravel layer. throughout the whole dirt side of the building. Which turns into muck whenever water gets in. It's slowly being removed but takes forever and a day and there are much higher priority projects on the list right now.